I reread that infamous 2010 New Yorker profile. of Gil Scott Heron earlier today. I was struck by the conclusion where Scott Heron tells reporter Alec Wilkinson about a novel he wants to write:
I have a novel that I can write … It’s about three soldiers from Somalia. Some babies have been disappearing up on 144th Street, and I speculate later on what happened to them and how they might have been got back. These guys are dead, all three, and they have a chance in the afterlife to do something they should have done when they were alive … I have everything except a suitable conclusion.
It’s also worth reading Greg Tate’s obituary of Gil Scott Heron here.
Quite intriguing Sean. Despite having read the piece when it first came out and again after GSH’s death, I completely missed the Somali pirates part. is this an illustration of the labyrinthine ways of GSH’s mind? Is it the pipe talking?
What did you make of the Wilkinson piece? Why the “infamous” tag?
Tate’s piece, though entertaining in its over-the-topness, is rather problematic . It approaches art as a zero-sum game where it’s not enough to demonstrate that the godfather of rap tag is spurious, but has to insist on the fact that GSH is superior to hip-hop, as if somehow GSH is sullied by any association with hip-hop. In fact Tate spends more time making unsubstantiated proclamations about which artists he finds superior, than he does making a clear and convincing case about why GSH is not the progenitor of rap. This does not illuminate anything, but merely rants at length, a disappointment coming from Tate who is otherwise an astute cultural critic.